Expectation and Change: How Do We React to Living in a New Place?

For my first blog post in Nantes, I wanted to talk about the more immediate culture changes that occur when really living in a new country for the first time. I think that each student studying abroad leaves home and arrives in their host country expecting difference, and each student also sets out with their own idea of what that difference will be. This understanding varies, of course, based on the student’s life at home and their understanding of the culture they will be living within, but also due to the general variance of life within any place. Within any single country, city, and even neighborhood, there exists a wide breadth of lifestyles and what a study abroad student experiences will be somewhere within that depth. In this way, no matter how well you researched your program, or how much you’ve visited your host country beforehand, or even how much you’ve talked to other students who have completed the program, throughout the first couple weeks of your program there will be surprises and you will be forced to adapt in ways that you would not have expected. 

On arriving in Nantes, I felt that I had a pretty good idea of what I was in for-that is to say that I felt that I understood the kinds of surprises I would be in for. I had been lucky enough to be able to travel through the Southwest of France for just over a week beforehand. So, as I got off the train in Nantes, I felt well-prepared for what I seemed to be a good mix of known and unknown. I was already accustomed to the time zone, giving me a leg up on the other students flying in that morning. I had been practicing and listening to French in the limited way you can while traveling; watching the IES Abroad's zoom orientation on the train made me confident that I could understand and that I had successfully shaved off the layer of rust that collects during the summer. And yet, despite these good feelings, living in another country will be, I think, a challenge no matter what.

Without over complicating these challenges, or trying in vain to fit them into boxes that don’t correspond to anything real, I would say that there are two distinct kinds of changes that I have experienced since starting the semester. The first is what I would describe as exterior changes, changes that answer questions like “What is it like it live in Nantes?” This concerns stuff like your housing, your routine, your classes, etc. The second kind of change is one I would hesitantly call interior changes, which answers questions more like “What is it like to be me in Nantes?” The reason I preface this categorization so unsurely is that the two experiences are so interconnected that they practically correspond to the same thing. Exterior experience affects interior and vice-versa (when I’m asking about living in Nantes obviously I am asking about you living in Nantes!)– so what’s the point in splitting them up like this? For me personally, categorizing the changes like this helps me understand how I’m feeling, or maybe why I’m feeling what I’m feeling. 

When I first met my host family, I felt really good. I fired off the canned, probably stale French phrases I had prepared and understood most but not all of everything they said back. They complimented my French. I felt good, but also bad because, while 'fake it till you make it' is kind of the conceit of the immersion study abroad thing, I knew that I couldn’t use my old “stay quiet and moody on the train so everybody else thinks you're French” trick that I leaned on while on vacation. I knew that my French, or their perception of my French, would deteriorate rapidly as we moved away from the script. My host-mom explained something about the city, I thought of something clever and maybe even funny to say, and I … stayed silent. It was at this moment that I understood that this state, of thinking of something I want to say but not having the words or the certainty that it corresponds in any way to the actual discussion, would be the state of my life for the next couple of months. And so if the exterior condition of living in Nantes is that everything occurs in French, the interior experience of being me in Nantes is that I feel, I don’t know, maybe shy, or slow, or even stupid sometimes. And it’s different than just being that way in French class or at a French restaurant or hotel, because it's how you feel all the time, and around people who you care about and whose opinion of you you care about. I want to be clear that this experience is not the whole experience, is itself not even necessarily a negative one and is often even fun or positive (how can I express this thought, made by my English brain, into another language?). In fact, I think it is this ability to change your sense of self, or to help you realize how it is tied to language or place or routine, that makes study abroad so valuable beyond the kind of internationalist, learn language, travel, learn culture goals. For my next post, I plan to write a more straightforward post talking about my experience more generally here in Nantes, but I thought this could be a good way to explain that beginning feeling of difference that seems, at least in talking to new friends in the program, a little universal.